Publicly accessible areas are often equipped with broadcasting systems having both audio and video components for disseminating information to the general public. For example, museums, shopping centers, train stations, bus stations, airports, and even grocery stores now have video, displays and accompanying audio systems that not only inform those nearby, but also present advertising banners or the like. In transportation centers, automated video displays and audio announcements are a necessity for informing travelers of arrival and departure times, paging messages, emergency announcements, gate or terminal changes, and a host of other messages necessary to facilitate efficient travel.
Prior art systems for generating and displaying audio and video messages often rely on “off the rack” audio and video controllers to generate and send signals to various broadcast and display devices. For example, airports are equipped with numerous video displays that display flight numbers, departure and arrival gates, schedules, and the current time. Many of these prior art video systems are equipped with complementary audio systems that broadcast messages of import to an area or zone within the airport terminal.
When a flight schedule is modified, a video display device displaying information for multiple flights will often simply change the affected flight information on the display. Often, a concomitant audio announcement is made to inform passengers that a particular flight has been affected. Additionally, in many cases courtesy and emergency announcements or messages are broadcast only through the audio portion of the system, as most display systems are not equipped to visually display courtesy announcements. This is a particularly vexing problem for hearing-impaired patrons, as they are extremely difficult or even impossible to reach by page, even in emergency situations.
Additionally, attempts to reach a patron or passenger by broadcasting an audio announcement often fail because the person being paged is simply not listening or is located in an area not covered by a speaker system. Prior art systems do not provide the ability to replay pages, or to play multiple pages in a single batch. Furthermore, most prior art systems do not have the capability to determine past paging or announcement events.